“I really want to do a film in another language,” she says, her tone ruminative but quite serious, over the phone from Los Angeles. “My dad’s from Germany, so it’d be really cool to do a film in German. I’m not quite fluent, but I can get there. And my accent’s pretty good. I wouldn’t feel too out of my element.”

It’s not just any German film she wants to work on either: Michael Haneke, that esteemed Austrian dissector of psychological trouble, currently tops her wishlist of directors to work with in the future, a group that also include Paul Thomas Anderson and Alexander Payne. The prospect of the sunny New Jersey blonde collaborating with the frosty German-born formalist isn’t quite as unimaginable as it might have been a year or two ago, before another prickly European provocateur, Lars von Trier, showed everyone what Kirsten Dunst is made of in “Melancholia.”

von Trier’s film, a nervy, finely textured relationship drama set casually over the days leading up to a quite literal apocalypse, is the kind of substantial art-blockbuster that reflects well on everyone involved — but it represents a career watershed for Dunst, an actress of long-held promise never previously gifted with a part this emotionally rich or restless. Inheriting the role of Justine, a clinically depressed copywriter whose mental unravelling begins on her botched wedding night, after Penélope Cruz bowed out, Dunst seizes the opportunity to bring a more acrid subtext to her radiant sweetheart demeanor.

The result is a startling performance that not only holds its own with von Trier’s illustrious gallery of complex female portraits (including Emily Watson, Björk, Nicole Kidman and Dunst’s own, equally impressive, co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg), but has deservedly earned her Best Actress prizes from the Cannes Film Festival and, only last weekend, the august National Society of Film Critics. She remains an exciting dark horse to consider for the Oscar ballot; whether she gets there or not, the point has been proven.

“Even before I read the script, I knew this would be something special for me,” she says. “I knew it’d be a chance for me to let loose and be vulnerable in a way that I haven’t been able to show before — because those roles just aren’t out there. Lars is one of the rare major filmmakers whose films center on female leads. We’re so used to see women on screen just as wives or girlfriends or moms, and a lot of people don’t like to see women on screen in the way that Lars presents them — they want them pretty and gilded, even when they’re sad and breaking up inside.”

Justine hardly lacks for surface prettiness, but she’s allowed to be chaotically irrational, even aggressively sexual, in her impulses in a way that certainly shatters the gilding — which is precisely what Dunst responded to in her. “Pristine vulnerability is just so boring to me,” she continues. “The performances that I love are ones like Gena Rowlands in ‘A Woman Under the Influence,’ where women are allowed to be messy and imperfect. It’s that kind of woman that has always inspired me to seek roles that are a little out of the box. I just haven’t always had the opportunity to do them.”

I suggest that von Trier’s preoccupation with alternately challenging and challenged female characters doesn’t really square with the accusations of misogyny frequently levelled at him by detractors. Dunst enthusiastically agrees: “What’s interesting is that many of the people who surround him in the highest positions on set are women. Not only does he create a lot of opportunities for women in his films, but I think he in turn likes to be nurtured by them — he’s more comfortable with women on set.”

Some actors have described working with von Trier as a trying experience — Paul Bettany and, most famously and acrimoniously, Björk fall into the “never again” camp — but Dunst has nothing but fond memories of their collaboration. Indeed, she’s keen to reteam with him down the line. “We had a wonderful relationship,” she says. “People call him demanding, but then, I’ve always been very demanding of myself as an actress. I found him more vulnerable than demanding, actually: I feel like his presence almost permeates the scene when he’s on set, as if he’s one of the actors. So when he gives you ideas to try, it feels like it’s coming from a very real, empathetic place. I felt very safe with him.”

“I guess it’s a different situation with someone like Björk. Like him, she’s such a singular genius, and when you put two of those together, there’s going to be friction. But it turned out be worth it — what they got out of each other was amazing. And even if I hadn’t got along with Lars, it would still have been worth it: it’d still have stretched me, I’d still be proud of this work.” She feels the film reveals certain shifts in the director’s own sensibility, too. “I know he’d hate me for saying this, but I do think it’s the work of a kinder Lars. It just is. Even if it’s about the world ending.”

Dunst’s loyalty to von Trier has weathered the storm of controversy that followed the film’s disastrous Cannes press conference, where the director’s poorly misjudged joke about Nazi sympathizing elicited fury from festival brass and visible mortification from the actress herself. (“Oh, Lars,” she murmured to him at the time. “That was intense.”) von Trier may still be dealing with the fallout to some extent — he took a vow of public silence in the autumn — but Dunst is mostly happy the film has come out the other side.

“I care for him, so obviously I was frustrated by his behavior,” she remembers. “Lars has always said provocative things, and I knew he was going down a really inappropriate track there, but it was so very Lars at the same time. I know, we know, he didn’t mean any of that; he was trying to make a joke, really badly. Who knew they would kick him out of Cannes? Maybe I’m defending him too much: at the time, I was shocked and humiliated and didn’t know what to do, but I was soon ready to move past it.” Winning Best Actress only a few days later suggested others were, too. “Yeah, it was just a shame that we couldn’t celebrate together. But he apologized to me. We’re good friends.”

I observe that it wasn’t her first experience of Cannes controversy — Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” in which she played the titular French monarch as a spoiled, wayward teen, endured a rocky reception there six years ago, and came out stronger for it. Does she welcome the chance to ruffle a few feathers? “As long as it’s not in a bad movie!” she laughs. “At least both ‘Marie Antoinette’ and ‘Melancholia’ I can take great pride in, whether people like them or not. A lot of people have come up to me and said ‘Marie Antoinette’ is one of their favorite films, which means more to me than any media attention.”

Coppola’s film was one of several earlier signals of Dunst’s intended artistic reach, though the actress has no desire to be cornered exclusively into arthouse fare. She enjoys adjusting to the differing scales of disparate projects: her 2012 slate includes sci-fi romance “Upside Down” (“It looks like nothing I’ve seen before,” she says), all-girl comedy “Bachelorette” and a supporting role in Walter Salles’s Jack Kerouac adaptation “On the Road.”

“I feel like everyone directs their own career according to their taste, what they migrate to emotionally and what kind of artists they want to work with,” she says. “And I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I can wait six months for a project that really interests me. The filmmaker is really important to me: it could be their first film, it’s not just about their reputation, but I have to really believe in them. In a way, to me, even ‘Spider-Man’ was almost like an independent film on a very large scale, because Sam Raimi has such an independent spirit.”

So, dreams of a German-language debut aside, she’s open to all offers? “Well, I don’t limit myself, and I don’t do things just to do things,” she says firmly. “I’ve been lucky to find people who want to work with me, whom I respect and like, but the truth is there aren’t that many good projects out there. And we make way, way too many movies. So it’s not always going to happen with every project. But I try and wait it out.”

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But he also had to repair the damage he had done to his relationship with Dunst.  “It was probably harder on her than anyone else,” Von Trier told me the night he was going to meet her for a makeup dinner.

Putting balm on the wound was the closing night ceremony, when Dunst gratefully accepted the best actress Palme, thanking the festival for allowing “Melancholia” to stay in competition. Afterwards she said that she should not have been punished for von Trier’s “inappropriate” comments. Nor should she. “Melancholia” starts off with Dunst’s lavish castle wedding, destroyed by the beautiful bride’s plunge into depression, followed by how she and her family deal with a planet hurtling toward a possible collision with Earth. “Melancholia” might have had a shot at the Palme d’Or won by “The Tree of Life” had it not been overshadowed by von Trier’s misbehavior. (More details on the film and a sampling of reviews are here.)

By the time of our video interview below, Dunst, who had already weathered a Cannes controversy with Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” had clearly forgiven her director. She was sorry to have missed a celebratory party, and clearly has learned to measure her words carefully with the media. After all, she’s been working in high-profile films since 1994′s “Interview with the Vampire” at age 12. And she’s happy to carry the promo load on “Melancholia”–as Von Trier has refused to give any more interviews. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” she says, laughing.

Working with Von Trier, contrary to previous reports, was “not difficult,” she says. Both had experienced depression; he opened up to her and earned her trust, she sys: “I couldn’t feel so vulnerable if I didn’t feel taken care of by Lars.”

Dunst admits that she got off easy on this one, compared to what Charlotte Gainsbourg had to do on “Anti-Christ.” She worried about her parents seeing her magnificient nude display, but her father told her it was “artistic.” “Only Lars and Pedro Almodovar write these incredible, messy roles for women,” she says. Even the department heads on the film were women: “He needs nurturing.” She would happily work with Von trier again–along with Almodovar and Michael Haneke.

While she has been heading in an indie direction since leaving the “Spider-Man” franchise, “I’m not an indie intense person at all,” she insists. In fact, she’s now shooting a dark indie comedy with Isla Fisher, “Bachelorette,” based on rookie director Leslye Hedland’s play. “We’ve lightened it,” she says. In January Dunst starts another indie adapted from the stage, Adam Rapp’s bleak drama “Red Light Winter, ” which the NYT called “a frank, graphic story of erotic fixation and the havoc it can wreak on sensitive souls.” The movie will co-star Mark Ruffalo and Billy Crudup.

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EXAMINER: When you work with a director that doesn’t do a lot of rehearsals, how does that affect your process?

KIRSTEN: Every film set is a totally different energy. You don’t know what everyone’s going to be like and you kind of have to work within what you’re given. Also, I do a lot of preparation before I start a movie. So, it gave me a lot of freedom actually. I appreciated it. Being on Lars’ set is the best film school in the world.

EXAMINER: Do you do a lot of research before you do a role?

KIRSTEN: Not research, but as I said it before, it’s almost like therapy between me and who I’m playing.

EXAMINER: With a role that’s so dark, is there a lightness when the cameras aren’t rolling?

KIRSTEN:  I was playing Angry Birds in my trailer (laughs). You’ve got to. You have to self-preserve. That’s part of it, too. You don’t have to sit there and be depressed to play depressed. Actually, you should be in a good place to play depressed, I think. We moved pretty swiftly, too, so there was definitely momentum. Lars has a great sense of humor, too. He’d yell out “Stop acting.” So, it was a very heavy thing and I’d have to prepare, but making a movie doesn’t have to be drudgery, just because of the subject matter. There was a lot of lightness, too.

EXAMINER: How was winning Best Actress at Cannes? There must be a chance for an Oscar, right?

KIRSTEN: That would be awesome (laughs). Winning Cannes was pretty spectacular. I’m very grateful. If I was nominated, I would be very grateful and honored. My family would be so happy and crying. It would be great, because my family really celebrates things.

EXAMINER: Have you picked a dress already? What would you wear?

KIRSTEN. I don’t want to jinx it (laughs).

EXAMINER: How do you recall the time here with the Golden Globes?

KIRSTEN: Well, I lost (laughs). I was a little kid crying, because I was a little girl (laughs) and people were saying “You’re going to win. You’re going to win.” I remember sitting at a table with the cast of “Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman” and my mom was like “Hide your face. Hide your face.” (laughs).

EXAMINER: Did you cry after?

KIRSTEN: Like literally, they didn’t say my name and I started sobbing (laughs).

EXAMINER: Are you going to cry now if you don’t win?

KIRSTEN: No, I’m at an age where I can hold it together now.

EXAMINER: Do you think this role will signal a new phase in your acting?

KIRSTEN: I don’t think about it that way. When you’re older, you have different opportunities, roles are different, and there’s more to do. When I found out I got this film, I was doing a film called “Upside down” and I was playing the ingenue. It was very “Love Story”, but it was such a beautiful and crazy world that this director Juan Solanas creates that I wanted to be a part of it. But I still play the girlfriend. That’s what a lot of the female roles are, but hopefully, it’ll be an interesting movie.

EXAMINER: Your 30th birthday is almost here. Do you think anything will change?

KIRSTEN: You know, I had such a fun party last year. It was my grandma’s 90th birthday and we have the same birthday. So, I  really threw a really nice party at my mom’s house. My friends, who are musicians, came and a band played. So many different people getting on stage and singing. One of my ideas was take over that place Deetjens in Big Sur, have my friends in it and put on a fun show at the Henry Miller Library.

EXAMINER: Do you see any change when you’re no longer in your twenties?

KIRSTEN: I hope not. When you get older, you feel better about yourself. You’re not worried what other people think about you, in general. You just get more comfortable in your skin.  I welcome thirty and I look young. I have a baby face (laughs).

EXAMINER: How do you feel about Hollywood with things like the Oscars or the Hollywood Walk of Fame, growing up around it?

KIRSTEN: I think it’s nice. It’s part of the industry and how we celebrate performances and people. It would be cool to have a star on Hollywood Bl.

EXAMINER: Did it seem weird having your character walking away from such a hunky guy?

KIRSTEN: I know, huh. She was pretty stupid (laughs). I’m a big “True Blood” fan. When I met Alex, I said “You’re my favorite vampire on True Blood.” He’s a really great actor. Actually,  he’s a really goofy guy in real life. He’s very sweet.  He’s very easy to work with and a really good actor.

EXAMINER: Did you notice any kind of dynamic working with his father?

KIRSTEN: Between the two of them, they’re like brothers. They talk like they’re friends about everything, so it feels like a very “bro” relationship between them both. But Stellan is the man. He’s such an incredible actor.  I love hanging out with him. Lars has a really good group that comes back every time. They are the best. Udo [Kier] and i went to dinner last night while everyone was watching the movie at AFI. I really had good relationships working with these people. We really got to know each other well. When you’re in the middle of nowhere, you really bond with everyone you’re working with.

EXAMINER: As a fan of True Blood, would you be interested in being on the show?

KIRSTEN: I’ve done the vampire thing. I don’t need to be on shows I like to watch (laughs).

EXAMINER: What do you think about Twilight?

KIRSTEN: I think those movies are funny. I love them. They’re awesome. They’re hilarious, too. There were lines like “You’re like my own personal brand of heroin.” That’s a line. I’m like, this is the best movie ever (laughs).

EXAMINER: What do you think about the new Spider-Man?

KIRSTEN: I love Andrew Garfield and I think  Emma Stone is cute, too. i think they’re going to be really cute in the movie. I think they’ll have good chemistry.

EXAMINER: Would you coming back in a cameo?

KIRSTEN: I’d love to. I had the idea that if Toby and I were extras and would just walked by in the background.

EXAMINER: How did you get in the REM video?

KIRSTEN: Michael, my bro, is my neighbor in New York. I’ve been an REM fan since I was a little girl. I would jump around to “Stand” in the mirror. I’ve known him throughout the years and he just casually asked me. I didn’t even known it was supposed to be their last video. He wanted to do it in the vein of an Andy Warhol screen test and I sat there. We did three different takes. One take he used, he sang a capella to me, so if I look embarrassed or I’m giggling, it’s because I’m so overwhelmed when he’s singing to me. It was really special.

EXAMINER: How did you pick the dress for the film?

KIRSTEN: We wanted a very traditional Barbie, very American wedding dress. But he’s never been to America. He’ll never fly here. He won’t get on a plane. Even at Cannes, he took his Winnebago, but he’ll go on a helicopter that his friend can fly. I said what if we took a boat with a helicopter on it? He doesn’t want to come over here. I know it. Udo [Kier] and I were joking last night that we are going to drug him and put him on a plane just to mess with him and put him in Time Square just to mess with him.

EXAMINER: How would you spend your last moments if the end was near?

KIRSTEN: I’ve been asked that question a lot, obviously. Me and my family would probably just eat a bunch of great food, cook a bunch, and drink delicious champagne. What are you going to do if it’s the end of the world? You better go out having fun instead of stressing about it.

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EXAMINER: The movie involves a character facing the end of the world. Does she know the end is coming?

KIRSTEN: I don’t think that Justine knows the end of the world is coming when she’s at her wedding. I think that there’s something she senses, but I don’t think that’s what makes her depressed. I think that she’s gone through this a few times in her life. The wedding and the pressure of getting married and realizing that this man isn’t who she wants to be with is making her depressed. There’s something else she’s longing for that’s not in her realm.

EXAMINER: Does Lars think that depression is sort of an inevitability?

KIRSTEN: No, I don’t think so. Lars has spoken openly about his depression. There are scenes in this movie that are verbatim what Lars went through, but I wouldn’t say that. He talked about his depression, but he’s not an over talker.

EXAMINER: You went depression yourself, right?

KIRSTEN: Yeah, I did, but it’s not something that I even wanted to talk about. It just kind of had to come out, because other people were talking about it. But it’s not something I would talk about anymore.

EXAMINER: Did it help you relate to the character?

KIRSTEN: Yes. I’ve always used my own personal emotions and things that I’ve gone through in my life to build a character.  The work that I do before a film feels almost like therapy, between me and whoever I’m playing.

EXAMINER: Was this film therapeutic in any way?

KIRSTEN: Yes. You don’t have an opportunity to do roles like this very often. At the end, it definitely feels cathartic. It should. All movies that I do, I feel like I got to release sides of myself. The last film I did was a comedy and I got to play a real mean girl. I get so uncomfortable. It was so difficult for me to think where that comes from, but then you bring those things outside of yourself. It’s fun to express those things. It’s part of why I like what I do.

EXAMINER: Given Von Trier’s reputation with actors, did you have any hesitation in taking this role?

KIRSTEN: As soon as I read that email that said Lars wants to talk to you and read the script, I was ecstatic.  He’s one of the great auteurs of our time and it’s like a month of shooting. How bad can it be? I’m pretty tough. I’ve dealt with plenty of directors at this point. I wasn’t afraid.

EXAMINER: Was it like Bjork writing a letter to Nicole Kidman saying don’t do this movie?

KIRSTEN: But Bjork is a genius artist herself and when you get two together… She’s an incredible musician and they had to collaborate on the film. I can’t imagine Lars collaborating with anybody else. It’s his world, so there’s going to be friction and that made sense to me. And it’s the first and only time she acted, so who knows. Lars also goes through different states of how he’s doing. I know on Antichrist, he was in kind of a dark place. Charlotte was like “We were filming in Germany in the middle of nowhere, the food was terrible and Lars couldn’t hold the camera. He was shaking so much and not in a great place.”   In Melancholia, he was in a really great place, she said. I talked to her about it, but I agreed to do the film before.

EXAMINER: Did you know that Penelope Cruz was supposed to do the role?

KIRSTEN: Yes, of course. I knew about it and already thanked her in the press (laughs). I definitely would thank her if I saw her.

EXAMINER: In what way was working with Lars different than other directors?

KIRSTEN: I’ve worked with directors before where the camera’s moving, following you, but Lars is really pared down. We don’t even rehearse the scenes. We just start shooting. It could be a scene in this room and there’s not much light. You figure out everything. It’s not really so planned at all. I guess this is the most unplanned movie that I’ve been on in terms of how we shoot.

EXAMINER: Was that improvised or was the dialogue in the script?

KIRSTEN:  The dialogue was in the script for the most part. In the beginning, some of my scenes with Alexander were a little improvised.

EXAMINER: Was it a tough decision to do the scene of you laying in the moonlight? Was it hard doing the nude scene?

KIRSTEN: I knew that I wasn’t going to be in a Lars Von Trier film  and get away without doing a nude scene. Hey, if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it in a Von Trier film. Why not? It looked so pretty. I knew the context it would be in, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. Not that it’s the most fun thing to do, but we joke about it and they close the set and they make it comfortable.

EXAMINER: How was the sex scene on the golf course? It looked so awkward.

KIRSTEN: Lars doesn’t tell you at all how we’re going to do the scene, so I didn’t know if it was going to be very graphic. It says Justine basically rapes this kid. So, I was like “Oh my god”. I was so nervous in the trailer. Me and Brady, who is now my friend, who was in the movie with me were like “How is he going to shoot this? Is it going to be really close? Am I going to take my wedding dress off?” Then, we get to the set. The camera is so far away and everything’s being shot from this really long distance. I was like “Thank god”, but that was the most nerve-wracking for me just because it’s so awkward. I dont know how  I’m going to phase into sex scenes as an adult, because I also had one to do not long ago. It’s so awkward. It’s the worst. I hate them.

EXAMINER: Your mother in the movie says she doesn’t believe in marriage. Do you?

KIRSTEN: Oh yeah. I want to get married.

EXAMINER: And is that way you imagine wedding like in the film?

KIRSTEN: No. I would not have a strapless dress. I’m actually in bridal mode right now. My best friend’s getting married and I’m the maid of honor.

EXAMINER: Are you really hands-on in being the maid of honor?

KIRSTEN: I’m a good maid of honor. I’m a good assistant. That’s why I don’t have an assistant, because I’m so on it that no one can be as on it as me. I know that. I’ll be a great maid of honor. I’ve already found a bunch of dresses online for her, bridesmaids and everything.

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BULLETT: When we last spoke almost a year ago, you pretty much refused to tell me anything about this movie.

KIRSTEN DUNST: I was afraid to! If someone told Lars that I’d said something, he’s the type of person who would probably be like, “I can’t believe you said that about me!” I was nervous about letting anything out because I didn’t want to be on anyone’s bad side during press.

In light of what’s happened, I really don’t think you need to worry about what you’re saying. [Laughter.] Lars has the tendency to write pieces of himself into his stories, and he shares your character’s struggle with depression. Did it ever feel as if you were playing a version of him?

He was never like, “You’re playing me so do this.” But he did write the story, and it is about his experience. I didn’t know how specific to his life the events were in the script, but in Cannes his wife said that watching me in certain scenes absolutely broke her. There were certain parts that she’d actually experienced and seeing me go through it in the movie, she said, “That was Lars.” I knew he suffered from depression, but I didn’t know to what extent. When I first met him, he was shaking like crazy.

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“I got an e-mail that said, ‘Lars is obsessed with you for this part, you’re Skyping with him tomorrow.’ He was very shy and sweet, and then it was like — O.K., done,” recalls Kirsten Dunst over sorbet and strawberries, describing how she came to play Justine, the central character in “Melancholia,” Lars von Trier’s astonishing end-of-the-world flick.

In person, Dunst is stunningly unpretentious. (When a taxi driver wonders why a paparazzo is bothering the fragile blond woman he has just picked up, she points to her face and jokes, “Hello? ‘Spider-Man’?”) At least on the surface, she has nothing in common with the magical, moody Justine, a character she describes as a “romantic depressive, maybe even from another planet.” Whoever Justine is, this haunting film (it gave one viewer, me, nightmares for weeks afterward) is hardly a joy ride. But Dunst insists the workplace atmosphere was anything but gloomy. “The family on the set was so wonderful,” she says, especially the two Charlottes — Gainsbourg, who plays her sister, and a riveting Rampling as her mother. “For such an unfunny subject, it was so much fun. And hanging out with Lars — he is the funniest, but it takes a second to get used to his sense of humor.”

Oh, yes, Lars and his sense of humor. When Dunst is asked gingerly about Von Trier’s infamous comments at a press conference in Cannes — you know, the one where he declared, “I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out that I was really a Nazi” (it went downhill from there), she dives right in. “I was embarrassed and angry with him because I care about him, and he felt so bad. I wanted us to celebrate together and it was just so stupid!” She says she is profoundly grateful that “ultimately the jury decided not to judge the film by the press conference.” As it turned out, they voted her best actress.

“It was pretty incredible to win, and I was so grateful and happy,” she reflects. “I felt grounded in my nerves, if that makes sense. You know how people say awards don’t mean anything? Hello! I think the energy around them makes everyone cuckoo.” By the time she won, almost all of her team had departed Cannes, leaving her clad in Chanel couture, “crying to my mom on the phone.”

Asked how, in her case, an actress prepares, she doesn’t for a moment revert to the pretentious twaddle that sometimes comes out of the pretty mouths of her contemporaries. “It’s such a private thing — ‘my process’ — I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character. Really, I’d rather talk about fashion.”

Today, Dunst is clad in a striped A.P.C. shirt and a Balenciaga skirt she bought the day before at Barneys (“I didn’t shop for a long time — people bother you”), an attempt, she says, to inject a little more maturity into her wardrobe. “I’m currently cleaning out my closet of childish dresses. I want to start dressing like I’m 30. Some of the things I have are like, I can’t wear this anymore, it’s not cute.”

Dunst says she is “not a big shopper of trends.” She loves vintage but usually confines those forays to her frequent trips to L.A., where her family lives, because “New York vintage is too expensive!” What did she think of the 1960s-inspired ensembles she wears here for T? Dunst shrugs. “I like it when I do a photo shoot and it’s a fantasy of something. I knew the concept and I’m easy, you can dress me up.”

Perhaps this flexibility is the result of making so many different kinds of films, some with more seductive wardrobes than others. Dunst still longs for the 1920s costumes she wore in “The Cat’s Meow,” when she played William Randolph Hearst’s actress-mistress Marion Davies. “There was a white dress that I would have loved to have kept,” she says. She harbors an affection for black-and-white movies. “People look better in black and white — it’s so much more powerful.”

Playing the game of what director — alive or dead — she fantasizes about working with, Dunst cites a real master of chiaroscuro: “I would have loved to have been in a Hitchcock movie.” And it takes no great leap to imagine how that fellow, with his notorious penchant for blondes, would have responded to Dunst’s allure. But it isn’t only deceased guys who interest her; she also longs to work with Quentin Tarantino and maybe do another horror movie, and she is having a great time on “Bachelorette,” her current project, which she describes as “an R-rated girl’s all-night comedy,” also starring Isla Fisher and directed by the playwright Leslye Headland. “I get to play a bitch!” Dunst says with a laugh, fairly licking her lips at the delicious prospect. “I never get to play a bitch!”

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The Melancholia star teamed up with the funnywoman and Lizzy Caplan in the indie comedy, where they play best friends who are invited to act as bridesmaids at the wedding of a girl they called Pigface in high school.

“I love her, she’s amazing. We had the best time,” she said.

“Also Lizzy Caplan was in the film and us three girls got along so well. We had a great time together.”

Kirsten added: “We just finished last week. We worked really long hours and really hard because it’s an independent film so we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot. It was very quick.”

There may also be a title amendment: “I think we’re going to change the title.”

Next up for the 29-year-old actress is Upside Down opposite British actor Jim Sturgess.

Kirsten has high praise for her leading man, saying: “Jim is lovely, he’s so easy. He’s such a nice guy – very normal, chilled, a very special actor, really good guy.”

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The 29-year-old actress attended the launch of the luxury label’s Le Gemme eyewear collection on Tuesday night at the Ilori New York SoHo boutique.

The stunning star looked sophisticated and chic in a floor-length, long-sleeve white Derek Lam dress, accompanied by Bulgari jewels.

Kirsten has worked with the fashion giant for a little over a year. She is the face of their Mon Jasmin Noir fragrance.

Despite her connections with the brand, Kirsten isn’t welcoming the idea of one day collaborating with them on her very own collection.

“It would be very difficult,” she told WWD. “Sometimes it’s hard to get those things executed.”

Kirsten also made light of the fashion no-no of wearing white after Labor Day. The Hollywood star said her outfit was in homage to the upcoming season.

“Ever heard of winter white?” she smiled.

Kirsten was spotted posing for photographs at the event. She chatted with partygoers, who included Ally Hilfiger, Fabiola Beracasa, Noot Seear and Jessica Joffe.

The actress has been in New York to publicise her latest Lars von Trier-directed drama Melancholia, and said she’s recently been working hard on her film career.

Kirsten has just wrapped three movies.

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The 29-year-old Spider-Man actress said that she opted for the Big Apple over Los Angeles because it enables her to lead a more private life.

“I love LA. I lived in the San Fernando Valley for a long time. I’m going back there for four months soon for the holidays to be with my family,” she told Time Out Chicago. “[But] you do live more anonymously in New York. People don’t care that you’re an actor. The photographers there stay far away when they take your picture.

“They know I don’t like it, so they usually just leave me alone. I just didn’t want to live in a house by myself in L.A. I did that when I was younger and I didn’t have… like, if you don’t have a guy around to help you with things.”

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Melancholia begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral. Actually, the new film from Danish provocateur Lars von Trier ends with the apocalypse – a funeral for everyone, as a vast planet rears up on the near horizon, lighting up the lawn and setting the birds chattering. Watching the movie at this year’s Cannes film festival, Kirsten Dunst was surprised to find herself giggling, as if this was some sort of happy ending. “That’s one thing you can say for the end of the world,” she says. “It solves a lot of problems.”

We’re drinking coffee in the basement of a London hotel, with embroidered snowflakes on the wallpaper and an Indian summer raging outside. The actor is attired as though for a night on the town – sheer black dress, jingling silver bracelet – even though it’s mid-morning and she has yet to eat breakfast. She confesses that she keeps staring at the snowflakes, her eyes glazing over, her mind zoning out. At lunchtime, she is due to board a flight home to New York, after which she has a clean slate for the rest of the year. You get the impression she can’t wait to put 2011 behind her.

Certainly, Melancholia has been a torrid passage for its 29-year-old star: a typical Von Trier rollercoaster that places soaring triumph cheek-by-jowl with low-comedy disaster. On the upside is Dunst’s performance, a role that is worlds away from the studio fluff that has taken too much of her recent energies. She plays Justine, the brilliant, dark-eyed manic-depressive heroine, who stumbles through the worst wedding ceremony this side of Festen and then belatedly comes into her own as judgment day looms. It’s a devastating performance, and one that won her a deserved best actress prize at Cannes.

And yet, for all that, the film risked being upstaged by the press conference that followed its screening. Riffing off a question about his German roots and his interest in “the Nazi aesthetic”, Von Trier joked that he was a Nazi and that he “understood Hitler”. Within hours the story had gone viral, prompting the Cannes organisers to expel Von Trier from the Croisette. The defining image from this year’s festival may have been the sight of a stricken Dunst at the director’s side, clutching her throat in anguish.

She winces at the memory. “Well yeah, you could see my face. I was choking, because I’m watching a friend having a meltdown. And what he’s saying is horrendous in a roomful of press. He was asked an inappropriate question [about his family] and his response was to make a joke about it. But no one laughed and he just kept unravelling.”

The way she sees it, the incident was a perfect storm of unstable elements, with her caught haplessly in the middle. She blames the journalist, the British film critic Kate Muir, who opened the floodgate – and the floodgate itself for opening so readily (“Lars always likes to stir things up”). But she also seems narked with her other cast members, who simply sat by. “That’s what I don’t understand. There were a lot of us sitting there. There was Stellan [Skarsgård], John [Hurt], Charlotte [Gainsbourg]. And no one said something. No one wanted to help. I was the only one to lean in to Lars and get him to stop.” She rolls her eyes. “And, of course, I’m the one person that people would love to rope into that situation. They’d love to mess with me.”

Why? Because she’s a Hollywood star? “Right! So then I become the story. It becomes, ‘Oooh, look at Kirsten’s reaction!’”

Presumably this is the hazard for any big-name actor who works with Von Trier. The man has a reputation for putting his performers in compromising positions, both on and off the screen – and when that performer is the American sweetheart from Spider-Man, Bring It On and Mona Lisa Smile, it only ups the ante. I tell Dunst that I want to read her a quote from that day’s Guardian. It’s from an interview with Paul Bettany, who worked with Dunst on the duff romcom Wimbledon, but who also had a starring role in Von Trier’s Dogville back in 2003.

“Oh, I know,” Dunst interrupts, mid-sip. “I love Paul, but I know he hates Lars.” The quote suggests that Dogville was a nightmare to make. Von Trier, says Bettany, has no interest in letting the actor be a part of the process. They are merely his puppets.

“Wow,” she says. “They must really have hated each other.” She insists that her experience was nothing like that. “I’ve felt like a puppet on films before and have been really frustrated and angry. I mean, Lars might see himself as some master manipulator, but that’s not how he comes across. I mean, most of the scenes were improvised and he doesn’t even say much. How can that make me his puppet?”

Look, she says: she agreed to make Melancholia because she loved the script. It’s not as if he had asked her to make Antichrist, the director’s previous film, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg played a bereaved mother who mutilates her own genitals. “That kind of film is harder for someone like me to get away with. I’m more in the public eye than Charlotte.” She pauses to reconsider. “It’s something about Charlotte’s body, too. You couldn’t have someone like me, with big breasts, in that film. Charlotte’s thin and her breasts are small and that’s easier to watch somehow. For someone like me to do that film – it would almost be ridiculously shocking.”

Or could it be that our sense of Dunst is partly conditioned by her previous incarnations? She has, after all, been a Hollywood star since infancy. She made her screen debut at the age of eight, playing alongside Woody Allen in New York Stories, and then popped up as Tom Hanks’s daughter in the 1990 adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities. But her breakthrough came a few years later, courtesy of Interview With the Vampire. Her turn as Claudia, the bonsai bloodsucker with the adorable ringlets and burning eyes, stole the film from Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.

It was, she recalls, fun to make. “It never felt like work, that’s for sure. Brad and Tom treated me like their little sister, their little princess. But I think children handle things better than adults. As an adult, you get insecure. You’re tired, you’re worried about how you look and what it all means. When you’re a kid, you just think, ‘Oh, I like my dress. Let’s go and play!’” She shrugs. “Plus I had nothing to lose. People aren’t going to tear down a 12-year-old kid.”

Life has inevitably grown more complicated since then. In 2008, suffering from depression, Dunst briefly checked into the Cirque Lodge centre in Utah. According to Von Trier, this experience was crucial in her interpretation of Justine, whose pristine, successful exterior is but the sugar-coating on a core of pitch-black misery. “She’s one hell of an actress,” the director has said. “She is much more nuanced than I thought and she has the advantage of having had a depression of her own. All sensible people have.”

Dunst gropes for the coffee. Yeah, she says. But it’s a difficult issue for her. On the one hand, she doesn’t want depression to be seen as a stigma, hidden away in the shadows. On the other, it’s private. “I’m not comfortable discussing it, even with people I know.”

To casual onlookers, Dunst is someone who appears to have it all. So is the stigma different when it affects a Hollywood movie star? Is it worse? “It’s something human beings go through, regardless of who they are. And yeah, I have a good job and people like to build me up as having a certain lifestyle. But I’ve got a pretty good head on my shoulders. I support my family and I’m careful with money. I have one apartment in New York, it’s got one bedroom.” She plucks at her bracelet. “This is borrowed.” She plucks at her dress. “This is borrowed. So it’s not like I’m living this crazy life with town cars and buying myself jewellery.”

She stares at the snowflakes. “But OK, we got kind of off the subject there. Depression can happen to anyone, obviously. And it’s different for everyone. But I guess I’m just trying to divert the conversation.”

Time is up. She’s all set to fly home, escaping Melancholia’s orbit for good. She has another job lined up for January, but until then she’s free. She wants to read; she’d like to write. At some stage, she’d like to move into producing. For the next three months, however, the priority is home and hearth. “I’m going to chill with my family. I’m planning to stay with my mom and my grandmother. And my cousin’s living there, too, at the moment. So it’s basically a lot of women in a house and we sit around and watch Jeopardy.”

Still living dangerously, then? ”Oh yeah,” says Dunst. “You can never get enough of Jeopardy.”

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